Periodic Reporting for period 1 - GTS (Genetic Translation Studies)
Reporting period: 2020-06-01 to 2022-05-31
After centuries of neglect, the translator is now recognised as a crucial negotiator in the international exchange of ideas. Accessing reliable versions of foreign texts is vital for international dialogue and establishing common grounds for the exchange of culture. Within this process, translators are regularly held accountable for their perceived fidelity to the translated text and for the success of its adaptation to the target culture. Yet we understand very little about how translators negotiate their personal ethics and creativity within the constraints of the publishing industry, or how they adapt to the culture of reception during the writing of a translation, its genesis.
The Genetic Translation Studies project addresses exactly these questions. Firstly, it ventures into the archives of translators to gather, analyse, and classify documentary evidence that reveals how translation processes and strategies evolve during the rewriting of a literary work. Secondly, it contextualizes this genetic evidence, placing it within its historical context. Thirdly, it uses sociological research methods, surveys and interviews, to determine how evidence of translation process is conserved by translators, publishers, libraries and archives, who is more likely to conserve these materials and why.
Furthermore, knowing how expert literary translators decide which strategies to pursue, when they exercise or restrain their creativity, and when it is circumscribed will be a vital resource for teachers of translation.
These insights inform a new methodology for genetic research in translation studies.
The Genetic Translation Studies project addresses exactly these questions. Firstly, it ventures into the archives of translators to gather, analyse, and classify documentary evidence that reveals how translation processes and strategies evolve during the rewriting of a literary work. Secondly, it contextualizes this genetic evidence, placing it within its historical context. Thirdly, it uses sociological research methods, surveys and interviews, to determine how evidence of translation process is conserved by translators, publishers, libraries and archives, who is more likely to conserve these materials and why.
Furthermore, knowing how expert literary translators decide which strategies to pursue, when they exercise or restrain their creativity, and when it is circumscribed will be a vital resource for teachers of translation.
These insights inform a new methodology for genetic research in translation studies.
Work performed during the period of the project includes:
• Exploring literary archives in Europe and discovering evidence of literary translation
• Analyzing the findings and developing evidence-based hypotheses about the nature of the translation process
• Developing a questionnaire for literary translators to gather information about their habits and opinions about if and how they archive their work
• Presentation of findings at international conferences in Europe and beyond, as well as to international networks of scholars (eg. The Self-translation Research Network)
• Editing a special issue of the longest-standing journal for translation research, Meta: translators’ journal devoted to Translation Archives
• Publishing theoretical articles in leading journals such as Translation Studies, PMLA and Meta
• Writing chapters for handbooks designed for students, teachers and researchers of translation, such as the The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology and The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Beckett
• Encoding translation manuscripts for the cutting-edge digital humanities project, Beckett Digital Manuscripts Project (www.beckettarchive.org) so that translation manuscripts can be analysed with digital tools
• Exploring literary archives in Europe and discovering evidence of literary translation
• Analyzing the findings and developing evidence-based hypotheses about the nature of the translation process
• Developing a questionnaire for literary translators to gather information about their habits and opinions about if and how they archive their work
• Presentation of findings at international conferences in Europe and beyond, as well as to international networks of scholars (eg. The Self-translation Research Network)
• Editing a special issue of the longest-standing journal for translation research, Meta: translators’ journal devoted to Translation Archives
• Publishing theoretical articles in leading journals such as Translation Studies, PMLA and Meta
• Writing chapters for handbooks designed for students, teachers and researchers of translation, such as the The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Methodology and The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Beckett
• Encoding translation manuscripts for the cutting-edge digital humanities project, Beckett Digital Manuscripts Project (www.beckettarchive.org) so that translation manuscripts can be analysed with digital tools
A principal objective of this Marie Curie project is to test the methodology in the newly-emerged field of research in translation genetics. Publications from this project, including the article published in the leading theoretical journal in the field, Translation Studies, “Theoretical challenges for a genetics of translation” raise awareness of the inherent problems of applying a methodology devised for the study of authorial texts to those produced by translators. The project advances the state of the art by developing an independent genetic methodology for translation research. This has been achieved also through collaborative research, such as the special issue of Meta, devoted to translators’ archives, as well as conference presentations, talks and other dissemination.
Furthermore, this project makes a significant contribution to the “creative turn” in translation studies. Extensive archival research carried out during this project, publicized in its dissemination activities, has detailed the complexity of translators’ work and the need for translators’ creativity to be assessed with independent criteria that account for the professional and ethical specificity of translation and the ontology of the translated text. By promoting an understanding of the complex nature of the translation genesis, findings from this project help alleviate certain ambiguities or anxieties that arise when a desire to recognize the creativity of translators leads to the conflation of translatorship with authorship. Conversely, this project has also shown how the discipline of genetic criticism can shed its untenable Romantic heritage and its biased equation of creativity with original authorship by adopting a translation studies perspective.
This project has instigated the first study of the archival habits of working translators. It advances the state of the art by providing data on whether, why, and how translators conserve their prepublication notes and drafts – materials vital for the future of genetic translation research. These new insights will help to orient future inquiry and inform translator training.
Furthermore, this project makes a significant contribution to the “creative turn” in translation studies. Extensive archival research carried out during this project, publicized in its dissemination activities, has detailed the complexity of translators’ work and the need for translators’ creativity to be assessed with independent criteria that account for the professional and ethical specificity of translation and the ontology of the translated text. By promoting an understanding of the complex nature of the translation genesis, findings from this project help alleviate certain ambiguities or anxieties that arise when a desire to recognize the creativity of translators leads to the conflation of translatorship with authorship. Conversely, this project has also shown how the discipline of genetic criticism can shed its untenable Romantic heritage and its biased equation of creativity with original authorship by adopting a translation studies perspective.
This project has instigated the first study of the archival habits of working translators. It advances the state of the art by providing data on whether, why, and how translators conserve their prepublication notes and drafts – materials vital for the future of genetic translation research. These new insights will help to orient future inquiry and inform translator training.